Blogs

The Mobile Frontier

About this blog

The computing industry is undergoing major evolution positioning mobile devices as the primary personal computing device. This blog will identify concepts and observations related to that evolution - missives on the journey to a mobile computing world.

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This blog post is contributed by Murali Krishna who works with the S&D department. He is a BTech graduate by qualification and started his career with Java J2EE development.
The back story I am an application developer for IBM, and I was recently working on a native application in iOS for one of our clients in which the camera takes a picture of an object and sends it to the server. Then the server performs a comparison with the predefined list of images already placed on the server and returns the matching percentage back to the... [More]

This blog post contributed by John Samuel who focuses on the Internet of Things and M2M with IBM. Well I don’t mean actually speak to you—that would be freaky. Imagine you’re driving along and the car starts speaking—that would put me off from driving slightly! So what do I mean when I say “communicate with you”? You might be surprised to know that cars have a huge amount of data within them, but they do. Even if your car is 10 years old it probably has a fair amount of data. But when a car leaves the... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Kleber Rodrigo de Carvalho, a software engineer for IBM Brazil and IBM Redbooks Thought Leader for mobile . Do you want to develop hybrid applications but don't know where to learn about it? Are you trying to understand the difference between Apache Cordova and PhoneGap? Or perhaps you wonder where you can get started with IBM Worklight? In this blog post I hope to help answer these questions. What's the difference between Cordova and PhoneGap? Apache Cordova is an open source framework for building... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Hisham Abdel-Hafez, an Expert IT Specialist in IBM Egypt and IBM Redbooks thought leader. Update : As expected, IBM has released a new certification exam for Worklight 6.0 that can be found here . The existing exam for IBM Worklight 5.0.0.3 will be sunset by the end of November 2013. IBM is also planning a new certification exam for Worklight administration that will be released soon. I recently became an IBM Certified Mobile Application Developer by passing the... [More]

This blog post contributed by Markus Van Kempen, a Canadian SAP Mobile leader. Integrating SAP with different systems, websites or mobile applications has become necessary, and the good news is that it has also become more simple. Formerly, connectors and programming languages were more proprietary, but in the last couple of years SAP has opened its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and adopted more standard technologies to enable easier integration. In this post, I’d like to show one example of how you can extract the number... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Murali Krishna, Team Lead for Java-J2ee mobility. Have you ever needed to show a screen from your Android device on a desktop? I recently faced a client scenario in my role as an IBM application developer in which I needed to do just that. I needed to show my progress on a particular development project to members of the client team who were at a remote location so that they could suggest any needed changes. The best way to achieve this was by sharing a mobile device screen onto my desktop (I... [More]

This post is contributed by Bas Pluim, Architect, IBM Smarter Mobile Development Do not be fooled by those glossy displays and sleek, shiny cases:
Mobile devices are evil! No, not because they cause antisocial behavior
in restaurants or endanger pedestrians by luring them into lamp posts.
No, these devices are evil because they break everything.
When I first started working with mobile devices ,
I made the mistake of thinking of them as very small computers. I mean,
they have memory and a processor, and they run software—which... [More]

This blog post contributed by Klaus-Peter Schlotter, a member of the IBM Software Services for Websphere team based in San Diego, California. IBM Worklight allows you to write hybrid mobile applications using your favorite JavaScript framework. jQuery, Dojo and Sencha Touch can be preselected in the application creation wizard, and other frameworks can be added manually. But what if you start creating mobile applications or you have only worked with native mobile environments? Which framework should you use? In a recent project with... [More]

This blog post contributed by Owen Cline, a member of the IBM Software Services for Websphere team based in San Diego, California. What is headless BPM? Headless business process management (BPM) is the concept of using only the IBM BPM Process Server to execute process flows without any user interface (UI) coach forms. Why do it? There are good architectural reasons why someone would consider a headless BPM solution. Consider these scenarios: You have a BPM workflow that is a batch workflow (or micro flow) and doesn't require... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Dr. Thomas Hesse who focuses on Web Applications, Enterprise Architecture Integration, IBM Worklight and mobile payments with IBM. ­­­Imagine your mobile customer agents could access your customer relationship management (CRM) system on a mobile device while traveling. They could browse the customer data (like address, contacts, orders, assets, contracts and service requests), right in front of the customer—or maybe even together with the customer—and place new orders or service requests in the... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Sukhvinder Aujla, is a Software Client Architect in the Insurance industry. In this post, I’m going to think from a consumer’s perspective about
the attitude I’d like to see a provider display when engaging customers
through mobile. I think providers should always be asking themselves why
someone would use their app or mobile site in preference to another. If
they are not, then they will lose. In this post I’ve limited myself to
just five approaches (though there are many more). 1. Make your... [More]

This blog post is contributed by David J. Pearson, Solution Architect and Technical Staff Member (TSM) working for IBM
Collaboration Software's Centre Of Excellence based in the UK . IBM Notes Traveler 9 provides support for additional
mobile devices, one of which is the BlackBerry 10. The implementation
of Traveler for BlackBerry users is largely based on whether the
BlackBerry 10 device is used within a corporate environment in which the
BlackBerry 10 Enterprise Server (BES) is used, or if the BlackBerry 10
mobile device is... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Moya Brannan, a Software Architect in the Financial Services Sector. So here it is: Apple Pay ! Launched in October 2014, Apple Pay looks like a grown up and full-fledged payment app that will let you shop till you drop. You can use it for shopping or to buy your morning coffee; so long as there is a near field communication (NFC) reader, you’re good to go with the Apple Pay app and your fingerprint. You can also use Apple Pay when purchasing items from other apps on your iPhone or Apple Watch. So... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Dr. Thomas Hesse who focuses on Web Applications, Enterprise Architecture Integration, IBM Worklight and mobile payments with IBM. This video blog post is an introduction to a series on mobile payment with IBM Payment Systems . It features a native iOS app (designed and developed by IBM Application Innovation Services, Germany ) that implements a mobile shopping experience—either in store or while on the go. Clients can use this concept in a mobile commerce scenario for selling different kinds of products... [More]

This blog post contributed by Owen Cline, a member of the IBM Software Services for Websphere team based in San Diego, California. So you want to build an Android app but you think it will be too hard, right? Well, think again!
What will you need? The first thing that you will need to do is set up your development environment. Fortunately, there is no cost to do this, and it is easy to install. Normally, you will need three things: An integrated development environment—in our example, we will use Eclipse The Android... [More]

This blog post is contributed by David Marshak, who focuses on IBM's MobileFirst Platform, Bluemix Mobile Services, and strategic partnerships in the mobile space. I am confident that 2015 will be dubbed the year of the wearable. The introduction of the Apple Watch will validate the ever-growing number of devices and use cases that we currently see on the wrists, lapels and even faces of early adopters. Wearables are the first real wave of the Internet of Things (IoT) , where virtually everything will have a connection to everything... [More]

This blog post is contributed by John Hsu, a developer for the IBM Notes Traveler for Android team . Normally, I’m not very interested in writing about a new release for a product that has been out there for several years. In most cases the new releases are only minor changes, and not many people are interested in knowing the details. However, this new release of IBM Notes Traveler , while only updating from 9.0.1.0 to 9.0.1.1 on the surface, really includes many nice, significant changes. Let me introduce the major changes... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Nathan Hazout, a developer for the web and for mobile who does customer oriented R&D for IBM Worklight. In April, I wrote a post named "Prevent malware-ridden devices from accessing IBM Worklight adapters" that discussed integration techniques between Trusteer and IBM Worklight 6.1. Trusteer, an IBM company, provides the Trusteer Mobile SDK , which collects multiple mobile device risk factors and provides them to the mobile app, enabling organizations to restrict mobile app functionality based on... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Bryan Boyd, a solutions software engineer for IBM MessageSight. "How am I going to find you in the crowd?" Running a marathon requires support—lots of it. You need energy gels, sports drink and, most important, encouragement. Two days before my first marathon last February, I was trying to explain to my wife exactly when and where to meet me on the marathon course to provide support. As she asked the question above, I realized that "I'll be passing mile 17 sometime between 9:30 and 10:00... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Katherine Sanders, an IBM Software Services for WebSphere (ISSW) consultant based in Hursley, United Kingdom. In my previous blog post , I wrote about how IBM API Management can be used to create, secure, socialize and manage application programming interfaces (APIs) to address the requirements of business users, IT operations and mobile app developers. In this blog post, I will delve deeper into the product architecture and describe the deployment topology and user interfaces.
IBM API... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Hisham Abdel-Hafez, an Expert IT Specialist in IBM Egypt and IBM Redbooks thought leader. In part 1 of this blog, I talked about the basics of developing location-aware applications in IBM Worklight . In this part of the series, I will talk about advanced geolocation features in IBM Worklight. The new set of location services introduced in IBM Worklight 6.0 allows developers to write location-aware applications that capture and transmit a stream of location data, which can benefit both the... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Scott Symes, a mobility architect for IBM Global Technology Services Service Delivery . Any mobile device management (MDM) administrator who is managing Apple iOS devices understands the need for an Apple Push Notification service (APNs) certificate on the MDM server. A valid APNs certificate is fundamental to allowing the MDM administrator to “securely enroll devices in an enterprise environment, configure and update settings, monitor compliance with corporate policies, and remotely wipe or lock managed... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Srihari Kulkarni, a Senior Staff Software Engineer on the IBM Worklight team . Let me begin with a no-brainer: Do you think that enterprise mobile apps must be secure? The answer, without batting an eyelid, is yes. So, what are the challenges in securing mobile apps? Are they different from other enterprise software? If yes, are the solutions different? If you’re looking for answers to the above questions and more, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, I will provide a layman’s guide to... [More]

“ Our Mobile Apps aren’t engaging our customers ”. This observation reflects the accepted principle that the measure of quality is different for mobile. User experience and how closely we come to delivering on user expectations most often determines the reviews and ratings our apps receive. The just released IBM's Institute for Business Value study, “The 'Upwardly Mobile' Enterprise: Setting the strategic agenda” , found that leaders in the mobile space use insights to engage... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Juarez
Barbosa Junior, an IT Specialist working for WW Development Support
Team (DST) at IBM. IBM Mobile Database is a free product for Android applications. It has many enterprise
features that ease the development of complex applications, making it
possible to integrate and synchronize the Android application's data
sets into larger database (DB) deployments using existing IBM DB2 or IBM
Informix databases. It also allows your Android application to operate
in offline mode and then conciliate the... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Gregg Smith, a member of the IBM Global Technology Services Workplace Architecture team within the IBM Mobility Center of Competency. If your organization finds itself stuck with an enterprise mobility strategy that hasn’t kept up with the times or doesn’t embrace the idea of Bring Your Own Device ( BYOD ) ,
all is not lost. With just a few steps, your organization can align
their strategy against the ever-changing mobility needs of the modern
enterprise.
Step 1: Document your current environment The... [More]

This blog post is contributed by David J. Pearson, Solution Architect and Technical Staff Member (TSM) working for IBM
Collaboration Software's Centre Of Excellence based in the UK . IBM Notes Traveler is a free product that when deployed onto a
IBM Domino server can extend the user’s email, calendar, contacts and
tasks to their chosen mobile device. As a solution architect with IBM’s
Collaboration Software team, I work directly with customers to help them
meet the challenges of being a social business, and this includes
leveraging... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Mohamed El-Refai, Executive Architect with GBS and the Chief Architect for China GDC . With mobile enablement in the enterprise being a mandate and no
longer optional, the existing enterprise architecture practices we
developed for our complex enterprise solutions are being challenged.
In a typical enterprise architecture practice, the initial focus is
on the business strategy, and that usually drives the business process
transformation needs, which in sequence drive the IT strategy and the
required... [More]

This blog post is contributed by Tom Devlin, Workplace Services, Mobility, Offering Architect, Community of Practice Leader Never saw it coming I didn’t know how much I would learn about technologies along my way to recovery from a heart attack. The attack was unexpected, but I have now recovered. While I’m a little overweight, I had no previous issues with high blood pressure or cholesterol, but it happened anyway! Even the staff in the emergency room thought it would be something else until the test results came back. Some personal advice:... [More]